The only thing you should " lose" is time. If you not play live market same as demo account, don't start. Systemic processing is systemic processing. Feeling uncomfortable, psychology issue, don't trade. Gather confidence in your understanding with demo. Than start small..
I was thinking the same. $3500 have to be the cheapest tuition I ever heard of for an aspiring trader. The OP should consider himself very lucky to not have lost more. That said, we don't know where the OP lives. In some parts of the world $3500 is a lot of money, but unless it's a third world country, hopefully it's not a disaster for the OP. Your story is an inspiration. 10 + years and a lot of money lost on the way is not an uncommon success story. Sadly, many people spend that and more and still don't make it. So, the decision to continue pursuing trading is a hard and very personal one.
Whether you succeed or fail depends on you. Only you can determine your fate as a trader. Most of the top traders blew up accounts and lost huge sums before they figured out how to trade stocks and make lots of monies.
Read the whole thread. Few things that jump to my mind: - how in the world do you start without a mentor, community, proven strategy? Find a community (they are not for free so mentors are there trying their best to explain) - once you have the proven strategy, BACKTEST it. - once you are profitable backtesting, go with a small account. Get your risk management under control! - and last thing: if the loss makes you nervous, DECREASE LOT SIZE.
Stop trading immediately, close all your brokerage accounts (you can open or keep a cash-only investment account for passive indexing at a broker not offering futures or CFDs), delete your usernames on ET and similar forums. Find a new hobby and don't look back. You can do it now or do it five, ten, or 100 grand down the road, plus a lot of emotional struggle. With a family to provide for you are also risking your marriage and self-respect / status as a man and a provider.
@Anothertrader1 h/t for @MrMuppet just putting this out there: If you’re interested in becoming a serious trader, then I’d be willing to train you in exchange for a 2year NDA + 2yr exclusive ownership of your trade ideas (though you may trade them too). After training you would cover shipping & logistics companies, along with global freight indicators.
I've never before heard anyone saying their options straddles were "swing" trading, although technically it goes for day and days until you exit. I've only heard the "Day" "Swing" and "Position" terms used in pure stocks/futures.
Like in business if you are not good enough alone why don't you team up with others to trade one account. You have more capital more brain power. Star trek do not have one guy running the ship.
Hey O/N sorry for slow reply have been away on holidays.In this situation I could get a better result than just going D1 in futures. I'll break it down. My outlook was to either trade sideways for consolidation or a bounce of some sort and for the market not to puke below 6700. Long futures short 7300 call in a 1*2 ratio (short syn straddle) Short the 6700 PF in a 1*3 ratio (short syn straddle) This was giving protection to the above position and even though a market fall would have resulted in mtm loss my theory was for 6700 to hold and therefore run to expiry if needed. Upside BE on that is 7200 and this is my upper limit for a bounce. The 6600 put cal was protection for a sharp move down after entering. This will go out at a small loss. I am being paid to hold this position for the upward move.